


To all the surrogate veterans

by ezyl (gamblers)



Category: Johnny's Entertainment
Genre: Alternate Universe, Gen, M/M, World War II
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-06-08
Updated: 2010-06-08
Packaged: 2017-10-22 23:34:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,263
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/243811
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gamblers/pseuds/ezyl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Thirty square miles of scorched earth in the middle of Death Valley. Two young soldiers who have lived a thousand years.</p>
            </blockquote>





	To all the surrogate veterans

**Author's Note:**

> [8.6.2010]. and here’s a flashfic for [](http://turtle-ai.livejournal.com/profile)[](http://turtle-ai.livejournal.com/)**dorodoro** , in gratuity for that sexy thang she wrote for me a while ago, as well as appeasement for bullying her into drawing dirty scenes for Mail-Order Ninja (you _poor_ dear, really). This is Iwo Jima verse with Arashi names intact; cameos that have a thoroughly Catch-22 feel to it all, coupled with a few risqué jokes here and there. I assure you, I am definitely sorrier than you about this.

* * *

The sun in California heats the earth like a disco ball floating in a hotpot. Inside and upside, rays beat down the land to a metronomic meter ticking at three hundred million meters per second, down the center fold of the rust-colored desert, down the sandworm dunes, down the diamond-cut sediment, down his forehead and his armpits and his ass, beats down and down until it starts to feel like some form of domestic violence. The earth absorbs and radiates the energy and relapses every fifty-seven feet, after which a brief spell of dry, crackling desert whirlwind will blast into every single orifice on the surface of his body and itch like poison oak and spicy enchiladas. In this kind of weather, even a skinny man is laying off a pound of sweat every five minutes.

Six more trenches later and with the slightly bent tip of his shovel as a poor excuse, Nino’s collapsed on the ground, licking congealed breakfast food off the roof of his mouth and thinking about ice on the mountain caps and mother’s miso soup. Orange from the juice of black beans, salted by the sea, topped with chopped leeks and green onions. Served with rice and a glutinous clump of fresh salmon eggs, rare to come by in Tokyo, but cheap from their local fish market. He swallowed mother’s miso soup by the gallon while listening to the birds sing in the morning, drank it chilled in the afternoons under the camellia tree by the stable. Listened to the whip of cattle tails, the splash of the seas against the cliff face, the crack of fish bones drying in the sun. (Home. Had that really been home?)

“Hey. You okay?”

He hears it from a position slightly beyond his forehead, and he realizes that someone’s speaking Japanese to him. It sounds foreign to his ears, almost a little refreshing; he’s been in America for too long and he’s had a whole year to jump into California’s melting-pot and soak himself free of that last bit of post-war trauma.

 _Plink_. A drop of somebody else’s sweat lands on Nino’s nose. _Plink._

“You okay?” _Plink._

“Yeah,” Nino grunts, pulls his legs under his butt and brushes dust and moisture from his brow, blinks up into the sun at the sweat-shined figure above, “Yeah. I’m okay.”

(I miss my wife, but I’m okay. I miss my country, but I’m okay. I don’t know what the hell I’m doing here, but yeah—I’m okay.)

“Wanna borrow my shovel for a while?” The man has a slight accent. He could hazard a guess at northern, but soon realized that the tone and the speech patterns gave hints toward nothing more than American Born Japanese. Probably grew up around here, grew up reading American comics and eating breakfast cereal, went to elementary school in a nice neighborhood, played football in college. Probably headed Operation Overlord as a member of the Japanese-American 442nd Regimental Combat Team or something, made himself a hero and a liberator to the Jews and the gypsies in Poland.

“I said. You wanna borrow my shovel?”

“Nah, ‘m fine,” Nino says, gets up and tries to keep from swaying too much on the spot.

“Hey, careful. Don’t hurt yourself on the second day.”

“It’s been three months for me, actually.” Since March. (Since the frost on the ground let up. Since the burn scabs on his back have peeled off in the shower. Since he last remembered writing a letter to anyone across the open seas.) “Three months.”

“Heh. So you haven’t experienced the Death Valley heat, have you?”

“I guess not.”

“Well, good luck.” The man extends a gritty palm. “I’m Ohno.”

Nino takes it for balance. “Ninomiya.”

  
*

  
Unsurprisingly (and somewhat humiliatingly), both of them end up at the hospital for sunstroke. Two other men are also brought in with Nino and Ohno, one misfortunate Private Sakurai who had landed a head wound he’d claimed he received from a female subordinates at a co-ed shower, and a pretty-faced, irritable sergeant named Matsumoto who looked like he’d just tagged along for the ride.

The nurse is a man.

“Why should that surprise you, anyway?” He says after Nino’s initial bewilderment, clipping up the muslin cloth on the windowpanes to let in a little sunshine and looking all sorts of ridiculous in his white apron and uniform, “You wouldn’t believe the amount of weird staring I got while I was attending nursing school. In this time and age, too! I mean, isn’t it better to have a guy take a look at your wounds instead of a girl? Especially if it’s like, around your genitalia or something?”

“No!” the other soldiers on the beds collectively retort. (Even Matsumoto joins in.)

“What’s your name?” Sakurai asks the nurse.

“You can call me Masaki,” the nurse answers.

“Are you a transsexual?” Jun asks.

“F-Fuck you,” Nurse Masaki says, flustered, “Why would that matter?”

“Whatever. I want my powdered green tea. You know how to make tea, right?”

Nino rolls over to stifle his laughter into the lumpy hospital pillow. Ohno rubs him on the back. When his palm kneads against an old burn scar, Nino forgets to wince.

  
*

  
Within a week, Matsumoto had driven everyone out of the hospital ward and back to work. Nino had been the first to make a break for it, then Sho then Ohno then Nurse Masaki, who transferred himself to the insanity ward right afterwards (though Nino had a sneaking suspicion that Ohno had only broken because he had seen Sho break; otherwise he doubted Ohno had noticed Jun at all). By the end of the ordeal, all of the members of the ward had been overexposed and permanently-scarred by the full effects of Matsumoto’s hissy-fits, toothbrush hunts, Detoxifying Urinary Implements (DUI in acronym), and yoga rituals at the crack of dawn. (“I’ve always wondered why his parents were so quick on letting him join the army,” Sho grumbles.)

The sun glares and thrums in the sky.

  
*

  
They dig trenches. Through all the days and all the nights, they dig, they dig, they dig. It isn’t clear what they’re looking for; the official post-war papers had reevaluation of threats scribbled in black ink all over the place, but it didn’t matter to him—digging has always seemed like the sensible thing to do, no matter how torturous and seemingly tragic it had turned out to be. Draconian benefits, to the tune of a couple of mind-settling mantras here or there. Nino had done it on that good-for-nothing island, and he’ll do it here in California, too. He’ll dig until he gets to the bottom of this misadventure. He dig until he falls and crumbles away like the soft dirt on the mouth of the trench. While he digs, people could be having sex and giving birth and dying slow and painful deaths, there could be earthquakes trembling and hurricanes spinning across the land, little girls getting blown away from Kansas over the rainbow, world controllers blasting empty threats for nuclear warfare at each other, the world could turn on its axis twice –three times– as fast, and Nino would not have given a shit. He’s here, he’s now, he’s digging.

  
*

  
“I think I might have lived a thousand years,” he says somberly one day, takes a sip of the powdered green tea and marvels at how sage-like he sounds.

Ohno just smiles. “If that’s the case, then I’ve lived a thousand and three.”

>>>

i fail at fic but i love them too hard so help me. D|


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